by: Michelle Barnhart
56 years ago, on Nov. 22, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, in a presidential limousine. He was on his way to a meeting with several civic and business leaders at the Dallas Market Center. But Kennedy never made it to the meeting. At approximately 12:30 p.m., he was fatally shot by ex-marine Lee Harvey Oswald.
That is the official story, reported by the Dallas Police Department. That is the story we see online, and the story that is still taught in history classes today. But many believe there is more to this story than meets the eye. In fact, there are several conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s assassination, many of which are still popular today.
A common theory is that Oswald did not act alone. According to an article from British newspaper The Telegraph, Italian ammunition experts claimed that Oswald could not have possibly fired three shots in 19 seconds from the type of rifle he was using. As such, theories have arisen that there was a second and possibly a third gunman.
It has also been theorized that groups such as the CIA and the Mafia were behind the assassination. The CIA was even accused of covering up information in the initial investigation. Individuals such as Cuban prime minster Fidel Castro, vice president Lyndon B. Johnson and Kennedy’s wife Jackie have also been suspected of plotting the murder. According to a CNN article, author Vincent Bugliosi claims that 42 groups, 82 assassins and 214 others have been suspected of involvement in Kennedy’s murder.
But the conspiracies extend beyond the murder itself. There is a widespread theory that the Kennedy family is cursed, as John is not the only one who met an early demise. His brother Robert was also assassinated in 1968 while running for president. John’s son was killed in a plane crash in 1999. Robert’s granddaughter died of an accidental drug overdose on Aug. 1, 2019 at the age of 22. Early deaths, tragic accidents and general misfortunes seem to have plagued the Kennedy family for years and continue to do so today.
Tracy Dotson, a part-time Parkland College faculty member in the Humanities department, shares another theory surrounding Kennedy’s death. Dotson recently read Mary’s Mosaic, a book about a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer who had an affair with Kennedy. Meyer was killed a year after Kennedy’s, and people claim it was because she knew “too much” about the president’s murder and was threatening to go public with the truth. “Even today, there are still more theories and information coming to light,” Dotson said. “It’s never ending.”
“The more people learn and educate themselves about the world, the more they can discern for themselves what is real and what is fake”
Dotson, who has always been fascinated with the “what if,” aspect of conspiracy theories, says that the Kennedy theories, “Have always had a lot of pieces you could move around to make up any kind of theory of what happened.” This is probably why the theories are still raging today, along with a natural human craving for answers. But why else might the Kennedy theories be so popular?
Dotson theorizes that people believe in conspiracy theories because they do not always want to accept the truth of what happened. She says with John F. Kennedy, there were holes in witness statements and world events that convinced people there had to be more to the story.
“I think, like with myself, people can be persuaded to believe something if given the right evidence for it,” she said. “The more people learn and educate themselves about the world, the more they can discern for themselves what is real and what is fake. But there is always that room for the impossible to become possible.”
